noun ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Any arthropod of class Chilopoda, which have a segmented body with one pair of legs per segment and from about 20 to 300 legs in total.

   "Centipedes differ from millipedes by having a single pair of legs on each body segment."

2. 2
   chiefly nocturnal predacious arthropod having a flattened body of 15 to 173 segments each with a pair of legs, the foremost pair being modified as prehensors wordnet
3. 3
   A many-oared Chinese smuggling boat. obsolete

Synonyms

All synonyms

chilopodarachnidarthropodbeetlebicentenarybicentennial

Example

More examples

"The sight of the centipede on the wall was enough to make my skin crawl."

Etymology

From French centipède, from Latin centipeda, centipēs, from centi- (“hundred”) + pēs (“foot”); equivalent to centi- + -pede.

Related phrases

centipede gamecentipede grasscentipede-eatergarden centipedehouse centipedesea centipedesoil centipedestone centipede

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.